contemporary classical comp. here

[foorere]

Hello all!



I am a contemporary-classical professional-freelance composer and musician. In general I compose a lot of orchestral music.

I am wandering around the Internet and just interested in some new software that would help me realize my ideas in composing.



Is there anyone from this side (contemporary-classical; not pop/rap/techno/rave/etc...) that use DP for music creation?



I am on Mac 10.6.8

I use mostly Logic (for improvisation recording, both MIDI and audio), Ableton Live (for MIDI effects like: Arpeggiator, Scale, Random...), Finale for notating, and other software for audio editing and notation.


I don’t know what is difference between Logic/Live and DP, and where they excel.

What I am mostly looking after is a powerful MIDI transformer, similar to what is found in Ableton Live: Arpeggiator, Scale, Chord etc plugins, but probably even some more.

I would like to have ability to easily generate a scale, to add a chord, random arpeggio, delay etc.


I would like to be able to record/write automation of these transformations, and finally to export it as MIDI or XML file for further editing/composing/orchestrating.


I am not so much interested of diverse sound-libraries, just a decent Piano sound is OK for me.


Any suggestions, clarifications, ideas I will appreciate extremely much.



All the best and thank you. Composer.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Welcome. There's a section of the forum devoted to composing that you might be interested in.

DP does XML now. Most L.A. composers I know use Finale and a few use Sibelius as well. I don't.

For me, having multiple sequences in a single project is critical when writing film and theater cues, as well as multiple versions of a single work.

However, when writing for "real" musicians I am in Finale from start to finish and don't use DP at all. I come from the "old school" of writing every note my hand and score faster that way than sequencing or improvising and exporting an SMF for transcription.

I see DP as a strong audio production app (I also design sound) but frankly if you're used to working in a DAW that you know and it works for doing what you do, then based on your post, I don't know that DP is "necessarily" better in terms of recording your notes - however entered.

You can align an improvised (not to metronome) performance to a metered work in DP pretty easily but not totally painlessly. I have used that on occasion. The notation window (and the quickscribe window) can also be lifesavers for improvised scoring as well as traditional notation.

Hope that's somewhat helpful.

[mikehalloran]

Like Logic, DP's implementation of MusicXML works one way: you can export but not import (dang!).

Like MLC, if I start a project in Finale, that's where it stays -- usually. I am not much of a keyboard player (and one-handed only at that) so I might start with notation and export MIDI files.to DP.

My daughter, OTOH, is a Logic / Finale user. I have on many occasions exported her Logic files so that I could import them into DP for editing. This is where DP really shines in comparison. I can get things done faster and easier with the knowledge that a project will sound the way I want. Logic does not inspire such confidence -- "logic" doesn't always describe the process, IMO.

Full disclosure: I started with DP in the 1990s and later bought Logic because it was cheap and I had students fooling around with GarageBand including my daughter.

Anyway, a good way to get the feel of DP for you would be to do the above. Take a project that you have recorded with audio and MIDI, export the audio and MIDI (easy), import those tracks into the DP 9 demo and see if this makes sense to you. As I like to put it, I can edit to a gnat's whisker in DP.

Do use the search functions here and ask questions when you can't figure something out.

[stubbsonic]

I find DP's MIDI capabilities and edit tools incredibly powerful for composition. I do all of my composition work with some combination of hand-written manuscript and DP. For distribution of parts to real human players, I use some combination of DP's notation (for basic stuff) and Finale.

You can hear examples of the the kinds of work I do on my webpage (link in my signature).

[Phil O]

Like Logic, DP's implementation of MusicXML works one way: you can export but not import (dang!).

Like MLC, if I start a project in Finale, that's where it stays -- usually. I am not much of a keyboard player (and one-handed only at that) so I might start with notation and export MIDI files.to DP.

I was sent a bunch o' MusicXML files which I wanted to work on in DP. I imported them in Finale, which does go both ways (that didn't sound right ), then exported to MIDI for import into DP. It was a pretty painless process.

Phil

[mikehalloran]

Like Logic, DP's implementation of MusicXML works one way: you can export but not import (dang!).

Like MLC, if I start a project in Finale, that's where it stays -- usually. I am not much of a keyboard player (and one-handed only at that) so I might start with notation and export MIDI files.to DP.

I was sent a bunch o' MusicXML files which I wanted to work on in DP. I imported them in Finale, which does go both ways (that didn't sound right ), then exported to MIDI for import into DP. It was a pretty painless process.

Phil

It is and I have done it many times but MIDI doesn't handle expressions, lyrics and many other attributes that MusicXML does. This is why MusicXML import would be nice - also, one more feature to set it apart from Logic (at least DP 9 is on par now).

I also use SmartScore Pro 2 which is greatly improved in that regards but nowhere close to perfect. Depending on the file, I often find that Encore does straight MIDI import better but its XML output is years behind the current standard.

You're right. The current setups and tools work. I would like them to be better, that's all. Now that I'm getting back into performing after so many years away and being unable to do what I could before, those processes that can save me time are worth the $$$.

[Phil O]

Good points, as always, MIke.